Kissing Jessica Stein

Jessica: You don't appreciate the chaos and absurdity of life on this planet. You don't understand irony, or ethnicity, or eccentricity, or poetry, or the simple joy of being a regular at the diner on your block. I love that. You don't drink coffee or alcohol. You don't over eat. You don't cry when you're alone. You don't understand sarcasm. You plod through life in a neat, colorless, caffeine free, dairy free, conflict free way. I'm bold and angry and tortured and tremendous and I notice when someone has changed their hair part, or when someone is wearing two very distinctly different shades of black or when someone changes the natural temperment of their voice on the phone. I don't give out empty praise. I'm not complacent or well-adjusted. I can't spend fifteen minutes breathing and stretching and getting in touch with myself. I can't spend three minutes finishing an article. I check my answering machine nine times every day and I can't sleep at night because I feel that there is so much to do and fix and change in the world, and I wonder every day if I am making a difference and if I will ever express the greatness within me, or if I will remain forever paralyzed by muddled madness inside my head. I've wept on every birthday I've ever had because life is huge and fleeting and I hate certain people and certain shoes and I feel that life is terribly unfair and sometimes beautiful and wonderful and extraordinary but also numbing and horrifying and insurmountable and I hate myself a lot of the time. The rest of the time I adore myself and I adore my life in this city and in this world we live in. This huge and wondrous, bewildering, brilliant, horrible world.